Shawn McGuire was nice enough to include a little extra piece when he shipped the guinomi he was nice enough to glaze and fire for me. I had been remiss in taking photos of it, but managed to get a shot of it today.

Behold another of the Flying Saucers, this one had a lot of crawling, or to stick with the flying saucer theme, its deflectors are damaged!

Very cool Chip! I see it holding and about to consume some sort of dark matter. Really great idea for a topic! Thanks for posting and glad those cups are getting examined for magical beings I want some of whatever your drinking, dude

Well, I have not posted any studio updates in a while, so here goes. It's been a few months since I've had the chance to make new work. My main studio space is located in a pole barn and until just recently there was not an insulated, heated, finished area that I could work in the winter. But now I do. Yay! It was a lot of work and really the fist time I have done that sort of carpentry, but we took our time and did it right. Now I'm a happy (and warm) potter again and getting back into making new work.

For my first run of pots I decided to do some porcelain gaiwan and cup sets. I made a couple dozen of these sets of various sizes. The glaze firing was interesting. I had intended for these to be just plain porcelian with a nice smooth celadon glaze, so when I first opened the kiln and saw the results I was kinda freaking out. Not what I expected and further confirmation that the kiln gods are in fact tricksters. Upon closer inspection I was actually very pleased with the results, and a bit frustrated by the fact that I'll probably never be able to duplicate this surface. The porcelain bloated in a way that I've never encountered before, very tiny, consistently spaced bumps that resemble a frog's skin effect. Usually "bloating" is an ugly fault where you will get just a couple of random spots in the body of the piece that have bubbled and inflated from gas being trapped in the clay. The results I got here really add to the depth of the surface and remind me of a subtle pebbled textured clay under a nice smooth celadon. I'll try and get some better close-up shots tomorrow.

Here's a small example. It's small at 40 ml. where the lid meets the inside of the cup (with no leaf) The cup is 50 ml. to the rim.

Adam, it was a small firing and I only made gaiwan and cups. I seem to do pretty well with my gaiwans. I don't see many out there that are handmade or in these sizes.

Yes, a challenge to photograph for sure. I did take these pretty quick though. Actually, I'm not even sure these pieces will be a set together. I make each cup, lid and saucer in the wheel together measuring them to fit each other, then they get fired separately and all the pieces get mixed up. So, after the firing I have to spread all the pieces out and put the puzzle together of which lid and saucer was made with each cup, blahhh...lol. I haven't done that yet because I just unloaded the kiln this afternoon.